


when you hold me in your arms

by Cats_Dont_Float



Category: Homestuck
Genre: (written in second person because it's homestuck), Depression, Earth C (Homestuck), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mental Health Issues, POV Second Person, Post-Sburb (Homestuck), Post-Sburb/Sgrub, Sad, dirk's pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:34:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22135621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cats_Dont_Float/pseuds/Cats_Dont_Float
Summary: Dirk Strider's pretty good at hiding his sadness. John Egbert is not so good. Luckily they've both got each other to help them through the hard times.
Relationships: John Egbert/Dirk Strider
Comments: 20
Kudos: 105





	when you hold me in your arms

You’ve gotten pretty good at hiding your sadness. Years of loneliness and depression and doubt have all twisted into a sickening self-hatred, but it’s easy to conceal it all under a blank, impassive stare and a defensive personality. Eventually, people stop asking you how you are, and you’re glad you get to stop answering.

You grew up alone, stuck in the middle of a doomed, watery apocalypse, and then got thrown straight into a game where you were fighting for your own life and the lives of your friends. It’s fair to say that life has not been fair to you. And maybe you thought you’d found something a little better when you were in Jake’s arms during those few months you were foolish enough to believe your relationship would last, but your crippling fear of losing him brought out your overbearing side, and apparently he just didn’t want that. The person you are is not a person that other people get along with. You know this, and after years of loss and fighting, you’re used to the daily pain of dealing with your thoughts alone.

John Egbert is different. He’s new to sadness; he still carries its weight on his shoulders rather than in his heart in a desperate attempt to keep himself afloat. He tries to conceal his pain with too-wide, buck-toothed smiles and high-pitched laughter, and sometimes it works. But other times the dullness of his once bright eyes is too obvious, and he draws away into himself, spends days alone in his house doing god knows what and refuses to answer messages from anyone. Sometimes he’s a swirling gale force wind of sadness and anger, and sometimes he’s just a tiny, pathetic breeze trying desperately to change the world around him. 

He’s younger than you, and yet you see your own pain reflected in the creases in his face and the tiredness of his eyes. That’s why it was so easy, you think, when he came to you that day, desperately seeking out just any single person who might understand and might be able to help.

“I don’t know how to feel anymore,” he’d whispered as he stood on your doorstep at three in the morning, rain pouring down onto his already soaked hair and clothes. 

And it had been so easy to pull him into your house and wrap him in a towel before he froze, and let him sleep on your sofa for the next few nights. It had been so easy to talk with him for hours about how much everything hurt, about how both of you felt you’d failed as the leaders you were meant to be.

“Sometimes I think they’d have been better off without me,” he’d admitted, and you’d wanted nothing more than to wrap him in the tightest hug possible, tight enough to break someone as fragile as him, and never ever let go. You didn’t want the world to hurt him anymore.

And, as you two ended up spending more time with each other than you had with anyone else, it was uncomfortably easy to fall in love with John Egbert.

You don’t cry, especially not in front of other people, but he seems to have enough tears for the both of you.

He was crying that night, when it happened. You’d gone round to his house to check up on him (it had been a few days since he’d replied to anyone's messages and that was usually a sign that something was wrong), and found him sitting on his bed staring blankly at the wall, tears pouring down his face. He said something about his dad, and that was all you’d needed to hear to reach out and pull him up into a hug. And at some point that night, when you were both sat on his bed in each others arms, his face and the front of your shirt messy with tears, he’d leaned just a little bit closer than usual, so you could see very freckle on his skin and the tears clinging to his lashes. And it felt so right to just lean in and close the gap, to kiss him and hear the way his breath caught in his throat in surprise, to feel his tears against your own face. You’d thought it a mistake, until his hands were in your hair, tugging at it desperately as he whispered to you, begging you to “please don’t stop.”  
You promised him you wouldn’t, and you kept your word.

It’s been almost six months, but it’s fair to say you’re both still hurting, just like you have been for much of your lives. You’re improving though, slowly as it is, and you know he is too. Last month you woke up to the sound of him singing in the shower for the first time, and recognised the unfamiliar sound of actual joy in his voice. You didn’t tell him you’d heard him, didn’t want to invade on such a personal moment, just rolled over and pretended to be asleep when he walked in, if only so that he’d ‘wake you up’ with a soft kiss on your cheek and crawl back into the warm bed with you for a few more minutes.

The both of you have fallen into a weird sort of routine in the house you two now share (it was best for neither of you to be living alone, you decided). There’s an understanding of sorts: when he’s sad he plays the piano for hours, and you don’t complain, because he doesn’t complain when you blast music in your workroom while you build and rebuild the same robots for hours on end. You don’t mind the piano anyway, he’s good at it, and it’s good for the house to be filled with something other than silence. There’s something sinister waiting in the silence, you both agree. And he doesn’t seem to mind the whole robot thing, either. Occasionally he’ll even sit in your workroom with you, handing you tools and asking questions here and there whilst you work, because he knows you love to talk about your work.

When he’s sad, you drag blankets down into the living room and pull him onto the sofa with you to watch hours of crappy movies and cuddle, or you lay in bed with him and talk about anything and everything until he eventually drifts off in your arms. You peel him away from his piano when he’s been there a little too long, and you make sure he’s had something to eat and drink, and you make sure he gets a shower each day. And though you feel like you aren’t doing enough, he assures you he appreciates it, because, in the end, it’s the little things that count.

When you’re having a bad day, it’s him that pulls you out of your workroom when you’ve been there all day, or when it’s past midnight and you’re still working despite how you’re struggling to keep your eyes open. It’s him that keeps an eye on how much coffee you’ve drunk, and who reminds you that your back will ache if you stay in one position for too long. And it’s him that gives you a massage when your muscles do indeed seize up.

And when you’re both having a bad day… well you tend to just stay in bed or on the sofa, mostly silent, occasionally exchanging a few words and whispers of ‘I love you’ when one of you falls slightly too far into their own head.

These days, it’s not quite so rare to see him with that glimmer of happiness in his bright blue eyes, or to hear his laughter echoing through the house as he watches reruns of old comedies on his laptop whilst he cooks dinner. Some days, when he decides you both need a little cheering up, he sits you down at his piano with him, insisting you ‘sing a duet’ with him. And you do, because there’s nothing you wouldn’t do for him. You’d cross every line for him, you’d travel to the end of the earth and back if you had to. It’s funny; the weight on your chest doesn’t feel quite so heavy when you’re singing and laughing along with him.

And at night, you curl up closely together, holding each other in your arms. One of his hands goes to your chest and traces the scars up there, travelling upwards until his fingers are pressed gently against the long scar that circles your neck, and you can feel your pulse speed up a little against his hand. Then his hand moves back so he’s holding you tight again, and his lips brush your forehead gently. You tilt your head, catch his lips with yours eyes, and let out a small, happy sigh against his mouth. Years ago you would have been too scared to be so open about your emotions around anyone. But John’s different. He always has been.

You’re still pretty good at hiding your sadness. But you don’t have to anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> are we still doing dirkjohn in 2020? is that something people still care about? i hope so because these boys make me soft and i have a lot of dirkjohn that's been in my drafts for months that i fully intend to post either way.
> 
> anyway i listened to Tom Odell's long way down album three times while writing this and i recommend that album to anyone who wants to feel a whole lotta emotions  
> (fic name is a lyric from Hold Me by Tom Odell)


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